Email Lists - Email Marketing Run Amok? (It Can Be Bad For Your Business)
Even if you don't have any interest in Internet marketing and don't possess a company (maybe you do not even understand what that is), for those who have email address, you have experienced the more ugly side of email marketing. You've probably even seen the ads for email address lists that provide thousands-or even millions-of email addresses. Did you ever wonder how anyone could come up with so many addresses?
You can be certain of just one thing: in the event the price is affordable, these aren't opt-in lists. Instead, these enormous lists are loaded with “harvested” email addresses. They're comparable to some summary of street addresses chosen from the telephone book. For target advertising functions, they're pretty much useless-on a par with sales fliers addressed to “occupant.”
Mainly, the addresses are harvested from forums, membership or student lists, newsgroups, message boards, web logs, as well as other areas where people gather to innocently swap advice. They don't understand their addresses sold on the open market and are being gathered up. They did not ask to be added to a mass e-mail list. And they certainly didn't ask to have their inboxes polluted with junk.
Harvesting email addresses is legal. But it's widely considered unethical. You will not go to jail or pay a fine. However, you might hurt your company, perhaps irreparably. The potential effects for violating the unwritten rule to having your company, from losing your ISP blacklisted to losing your domain name.